Download Autism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Uta Frith PDF

By Uta Frith

What reasons autism? Is it a genetic disease, or as a result of a few unknown environmental danger? Are we dealing with an autism epidemic? What are the most signs, and the way does it relate to Asperger syndrome? every person has heard of autism, however the sickness itself is little understood. It has captured the general public mind's eye via movies and novels portraying people with baffling mixtures of incapacity and amazing expertise, and but the truth is that it usually locations a heavy burden on victims and their households. This Very brief advent bargains a transparent assertion on what's presently recognized approximately autism and Asperger syndrome. Explaining the titanic array of alternative stipulations that cover at the back of those labels, and looking out at indicators from the entire spectrum of autistic problems, it explores the potential motives for the plain upward push in autism and likewise evaluates the hyperlinks with neuroscience, psychology, mind improvement, genetics, and environmental motives together with MMR and Thimerosal. This VSI additionally explores the psychology in the back of social impairment and savantism, and sheds gentle on what it's wish to stay contained in the brain of the sufferer.

Experimental philosophy is a brand new stream that seeks to come back the self-discipline of philosophy to a spotlight on questions about how humans really imagine and think. Departing from a long-standing culture, experimental philosophers exit and behavior systematic experiments to arrive a greater figuring out of people's traditional intuitions approximately philosophically major questions.

The fellow Who Mistook His spouse for a Hat brings jointly twenty-four of Oliver Sacks’ such a lot attention-grabbing and liked case reports. The sufferers in those pages are faced with virtually inconceivably unusual neurological issues; in Sacks’ telling, their tales are a profound testomony to the adaptability of the human mind and the resilience of the human spirit.

A finished, multidisciplinary evaluation, Neural Plasticity and reminiscence: From Genes to mind Imaging presents an in-depth, updated research of the examine of the neurobiology of reminiscence. top experts percentage their clinical event within the box, overlaying a variety of subject matters the place molecular, genetic, behavioral, and mind imaging concepts were used to enquire how mobile and mind circuits could be converted by way of adventure.

Encephalitis Lethargica: in the course of and After the Epidemic is equivalent to a detective novel a couple of significant scientific secret that is still unsolved. in the course of the Nineteen Twenties and Thirties a wierd, very polymorphic affected a lot of the area even supposing no longer even as all over the place and definitely no longer with an identical indicators.

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Given previous scandals where public reassurance had been wrong, politicians feel understandably ambivalent and are torn between whether to side with scientists or parental pressure groups. Autism poisoning by heavy metals. It seemed possible that this could be a contributory cause of autism. This is another idea that was worth pursuing. It was taken very seriously by scientists in the USA and particularly in Japan, where in the recent past a terrible environmental disaster due to metal poisoning had occurred.

These symptoms are temporary and soon shaken off by almost all healthy children. But there are rare cases where things can go wrong, and very wrong, where consequences might even result in brain damage. Now, if vaccinations were multiplied, would the risk be even higher? Precisely such a multiplication was introduced relatively recently. In many countries it became health policy to protect the population with a 44 single vaccination against three killer diseases, measles, mumps, and rubella—MMR, the triple vaccination.

Will there be a clear line to 21 The changing face of autism In 1964, Bernard Rimland’s book on autism was a breath of fresh air. It championed an approach that had already been adopted by scientists at a number of medical and psychological centres. These scientists analysed cognitive abilities of autistic children, such as speech and language, perception and memory, in detail. They found strengths as well as weaknesses, and this overturned two ideas: one, that autistic children were mentally retarded overall; the other, that they were secretly highly intelligent.